Frequently asked questions

The Searchmetrics FAQs

FAQs

Basics

Changing the password

To change your password, click on "my profile" under settings. You can then change your password under license overview. Alternatively, the following link can be used: http://suite.searchmetrics.com/de/settings/change_password .

How to invite a user?

To invite a new user, select your own license under Settings. In the main navigation (black bar), you can select "Create user" under “User”. From here you can invite additional users. Alternatively, the following link can be used: http://suite.searchmetrics.com/de/admin/invite-user .

What rights can I assign to the users on my license?

Under "My license", you can invite users to your license and manage their access rights. You can determine whether the user only has the right to see or edit his self-created reports/exports, whether he should be granted access to the (limited) research area and which projects within the sublicense he should be allowed to access. In addition, you can assign a status to every user. Unlike a user, an administrator has the right to create sublicenses and new users and has full access to all projects, while this can be restricted for users. For example, you can assign a user read-only rights, meaning he can only read a project but not edit it.

Why do I need sublicenses?

By creating sublicenses, you can split your Suite license into different areas. You can individually assign a maximum number of users, projects, reports, credits and more to a sublicense. This enables you to make a defined part of your license available to a customer or a business department. You can also create projects on a certain sublicense and give a select user group access to this sublicense (and the projects it contains).

For which countries is the suite available?

The list of available search engines can be found on the Searchmetrics website and is accessible via the following link: http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/products/search-engine-overview/

Research

What is social visibility?

Social Visibility represents how visible a selected domain is on leading social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+1, Pinterest). Social Visibility looks at user actions, such as liking or sharing something on Facebook, (e.g. Facebook’s like button) as well as the URLs from the selected domain that are shared in the social media space. The different user actions are weighted differently depending on the influence of the network.

What does Social Visibility show us?

A higher Social Visibility score of a domain indicates more popularity and interactions in the social media space. Comparison to thematically similar websites or competitors helps users to assess the strength of the domain in the market as well as potential growth opportunities.

How often does the data in Essentials updated?

In every element (KPI, grid or chart) of the domain, keyword or social module of Searchmetrics Essentials, there is a calendar icon indicating ‘7’ or ‘30’ in the top right corner. All Essentials’ elements containing ‘7’ are updated weekly. The ones containing ‘30’ are updated once a month.

Which period of time does the data in Essentials refer to?

Regardless if Essentials data is updated on a weekly or monthly basis , all data points, such as search volume and traffic index, are monthly numbers unless otherwise indicated.

Where can I see the development of my credits?

In order to get an overview of the previously used and loaded credits, the credits overview helps the user to do so. The overview can be found in the user dropdown between settings and logout.

A special filter above the table allows the user to filter already used credits according to the favored date. A green highlighted display in the right top corner shows the available credits the user has. The credit overview informs about date, API/export analyses, type and the number of used credits of the particular export.

Depending on the particular essentials package the user owns, the number of credits gets increased again each month. The red highlighted numbers show the used credits and the green highlighted numbers the loaded ones.

How do I create a report?

Via the report icon in every element (kpi, grid, chart) the user can create his personal report. After the creation the favored elements can be added to the report with a click on the icon. The description of the report can be chosen by the user himself. Via the button add and edit report the user gets to edit his report. Here, the elements can be moved into the lower boxes by drag & drop. The adjustments of the elements have to be chosen by the user himself. Afterwards, the project needs to be saved before using it. Additional changes are possible. The icon with the crayon leads the user back to the editing page.

The created report can be exported as a PDF file as well as sent in an e-mail. With only one click on Export to PDF the report can be opened and saved immediately in a PDF file. The data can be also sent to a favored e-mail address. Here, the user has the possibility to send the link to the current page in an e-mail (KPI, Grid or Chart) text or to send it as an attached PDF document. The data in the report always gets updated.

What is a credit overview?

Credits can be seen in the credit overview, so that the user gets an overview of so far used and charged credits. The overview is displayed in the user dropdown between settings and log-out.

A special filter above the table allows the user to filter and see already used credits according to the favored date. A green notification on the right hand sight refers to the credits that are still available. In case of a zero value, the notification turns black. The credit overview informs about date, API/ export analysis, type and the amount of used credits of the particular export.

What is SEO visibility?

SEO Visibility is composed of search volume and the position of ranking keywords. Each position is individually measured by a calculated factor from Searchmetrics. Also, the SEO Visibility factors in whether the ranking keywords are navigational or informational.

What does SEO Visibility show us?

SEO Visibility presents the current trend and historical development of a domain's visibility in search engines. The index reflects how often a website shows up in the search results. While SEO Visibility can relate to a website's real traffic, it is important to remember that traffic can come from many different places online. Therefore SEO Visibility is only an indicator of visibility that comes from a website's organic search channel. SEO Visibility makes it possible to compare the performance of different domains in search engines. Because of the historical data, problems as well as positive changes can be identified. Comparing the SEO Visibility of thematically similar websites or competitors will provide the most value as developments of the market environment will be factored in and market trends easily identified.

What is Long Tail analysis?

In contrast to weekly data, the long tail data also contains search terms that consist of more than three words., which consequently refer to more specific queries; for example, "Italian Restaurant Munich Central Station".

Depending on the website and concept, this data can be extremely valuable for the recognition and development of market niches.

What does the competitor chart show? How do I read the graph?

The competitor chart displays competitive keywords on the x-axis, relative to the chosen domain. On the y-axis, we have the traffic index for the competitive keywords, which are also relative to the chosen domain since the keyword set sampled for analysis is made up of ranking keywords for the chosen domain.

The competitor chart can be read like an Eisenhower Matrix. On the left, you can see niche competitors and on the right, broad competitors. The top part of the graph indicates more traffic intensive competitors. This means that your main competitors can be found in the top right of the graph.

What is a level?

The "Level" describes the number of clicks needed to reach the respective page, starting from the home page. Every home page has Level 0, and every page linked from the home page has Level 1, etc.

How is the potential calculated (optimization)?

The potential depends on whether it is an error, a warning or a notice and how frequently these occur. Errors have a greater potential than warnings and warnings have a greater potential than notices.

Why are not all keywords that have changed positions shown under "Winners & Losers"?

"Winners & Losers" are keywords that have improved (or worsened) their ranking and have gained (or lost) traffic index at the same time. This means that if a keyword has risen 5 points in the ranking but has not won a traffic index, it is not a winner.

Where can I find the keyword position history for a keyword?

The "Keywords" column in the keyword rankings shows 2 icons next to each keyword. Clicking on the icon to the right will open a new window with the keyword position history. Here the position history, the current position, the best position of the selected keyword and its current ranking for the first 10 positions are displayed.

What is the competitors’ traffic index?

The competitors’ traffic index corresponds to the assumed number of clicks on the search result of the competitor for the corresponding competitive keywords.

Why are ranking keywords contained in the longdetail data but not in the weekly data in the essentials of my domain?

Our keyword database is divided into a longtail database and a weekly database. The longtail database contains more keywords than the weekly database. As a result, it may happen that ranking keywords are listed in the longtail area but not in the weekly updated area.

Project Area

How can I add a large number of keywords to a project all at once?

Keywords can be added to a project via CSV import. To do so, they keywords must first be saved in a CSV file.

Select the keyword tab in the project wizard and download the sample file.

Open a program such as Microsoft Excel, Open Office, etc.

Create a blank workbook via "File" > "New" > "Blank workbook"

Click on the "Data" tab, select "From text" and then select the downloaded CSV file.

Under “Separator”, now select the same "separator" that separates the keywords from the tags, so that all keywords in the first column and all the tags in the second column are displayed in the display field of the text conversion assistant.

Click on "Finish" and confirm insertion into the worksheet by clicking "OK".

Add your own keywords (in column A) and tags (separated by commas in column B) to the sample file. Make sure row 1 with the cells "Keyword" and "Tags" remains unchanged.

Save the file as a "CSV (separated by a delimiter)" file.

Click on "CSV upload" and select the saved CSV file.

Removing tags

To delete tags, the project must be selected in the main navigation and edited with the pen. Once in the project wizard, click on "Keywords" in the menu on the left. Here, tags can be removed individually by clicking on the X icon. You can also filter for tags in order to edit several keywords at once. Now all the keywords in question can be marked using the checkbox. Below the list of keywords is the field "Add/remove tags". Remove the check mark from the tags you want to delete and click "Apply".

Why is backlink exporting aborted at times?

Caching or stability problems can occur during export. This problem is caused by the continuous crawling of the backlinks. The data is cached on several servers in different layers. Discrepancies can occur in rare cases. This will result in the export being aborted. In general, exporting will work if you try again at some later time.

What decides whether a keyword is in the weekly or monthly database?

The monthly database contains 100,000,000 keywords that are updated monthly. Part of it is updated weekly in order to display the ranking trend. For the weekly data, keywords are selected that provide the most authentic representation possible of the search behavior. This can include keywords with a highly fluctuating traffic index and search volume, as well as those with relatively stable values.

Why does the same keyword appear twice with different data?

In this case, Google presents the phenomenon of having the same URL ranking at the bottom of the first page and the top of the second page. This can happen when Google directs the DNS (Domain Name System) entry to a datacenter IP during browsing, where the data differs somewhat. This is not a bug.

How much data/how many keywords are monitored for the respective countries?

Unfortunately, we don't have a definite answer for this. You can get a pretty good idea yourself by comparing international domains, e.g. YouTube.com or Wikipedia.org, in the research area for different search engines, e.g. Google.fr and Google.uk, or, if possible, the country domain directly, e.g. Amazon.fr and Amazon.uk. Based on the number of longtail keywords, you can compare the relationship between the countries and which country has more or less keywords being monitored.

What does "Traffic Index" mean and how is it calculated?

The Traffic Index corresponds to the assumed number of clicks per month on the search result.

Why is the sum of the traffic distribution not equal to the total traffic?

The traffic distribution shows the estimated visits to your projects via the Organic, Paid and Social channels. However, websites are also visited directly or via a link, and as a result the measured overall traffic is higher.

How long will it take before I can see my traffic data?

The first traffic data will be available in the project just a few short hours after linking a Webanalytics account. The data is updated daily and provided for the previous day.

Can I exclude certain page areas from the optimization crawler?

Yes, the SearchmetricsBot adheres to the standards of the robots.txt. Disallow instructions listed in this file will be followed. Instructions such as "Allow", "Wildcards" and others are currently not supported. Additional information can be found on the Searchmetrics Website: http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/searchmetrics-bot/

Why does the SearchmetricsBot not comply with my robots.txt?

In most cases, this is caused by errors in the robots.txt file. The instruction block for the SearchmetricsBot must be above the general (user agent: *) block. Please note the blank line between two instruction blocks. robots.txt Example:

User-agent: SearchmetricsBotDisallow: /admin/

User-agent: *Disallow: /admin/Allow: /

What will be crawled?

The SearchmetricsBot crawls all pages within the specified project. This means, if only a domain is specified (without www) in the project area, all subdomains can be crawled. If a subdomain is specified in the project area, only pages within this subdomain can be crawled. If a directory is specified, only the documents within the directory are crawled.

Can URL parameters be excluded?

No, it is not possible to exclude parameters from the weekly audit.

I have 404 errors on my page. Where are these linked from?

A 404 error is considered a broken link. In order to find where this inaccessible page is linked from, all pages with internal broken links should be checked. Besides the 404 pages, other errors in the 400 and 500 range, as well as forwarding chains for internally broken links are listed.

How can projects be moved between sublicenses?

To move a project to another sublicense, select your license via the settings menu. This will open the license overview, where the projects for this license can be selected via the main navigation (black bar). All created projects are listed here and projects can be moved to a different sublicense under “Options”. To do so, click on the grey arrow and select the desired sublicense. Alternative: http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/admin/license-projects

Why can't I delete the project I just created?

Projects can only be deleted after a waiting period of 2 weeks. If you want to delete your project before the end of that period, please contact support via the Support & Feedback button.

Why is there no ranking data after creating the project?

Ranking data such as winners/losers, trend and tag potential require comparative data from the previous week. If the keywords are not yet part of the Searchmetrics database, then this data will only be available in the second week after creating the project.

Create project: domain with or without "www"?

As a rule, the pages of the project that are subdomains of the project domain are recorded and crawled. "www" itself is a subdomain of the domain name without "www". This means that if the domain is listed with "www", only pages that are subdomains of the former are added to the project. Meaning all pages that also have the "www" header. If the domain is entered without "www" however, all subdomains are recorded, including "www" subdomains.

Create project: When will I receive data?

Generally, it takes 24 hours to provide ranking data. An exception to this is winner/loser data and trend and tag potentials, assuming the keywords are not yet in the Searchmetrics database. This data needs comparative data from a different reference period. It can take up to one week for this data to become available. It can also take up to one week to have the optimization data available.

Change domain: Is historical data adopted?

The data history is not deleted when the domain is changed. It is continued accordingly based on the new domain.

Why are the search volume values in the Suite not the same as the Google values?

The search volume values in the Suite are retrieved directly from Google Adwords. The monthly local search queries of the "Exact" concordance type are taken into account. This setting, as well as the proper country setting should be paid attention to whenever the values are checked.

Facebook page data does not equal Facebook data in the Suite

The data in the Suite pertaining to Facebook Likes, Shares, etc. are relative to the domain and the associated "Like" button. An existing Facebook page via the domain has nothing to do with this. This means the Facebook page can have different data, since these are not considered in the Suite.

About Searchmetrics

Searchmetrics is the pioneer and leading global provider of search analytics, digital marketing software and SEO services. It operates the Searchmetrics Suite, and innovative, interactive SEO platform that offers a holistic consulting approach to helping companies develop and execute intelligent, long term digital marketing and content strategies.

The award-winning research section of our SEO software includes the functions SEO, PPC, as well as social, links, and keyword research: Customized website and SEO analysis for comprehensive search engine optimization.

If you want to know more about SEO or to have more information on certain terms and their definitions, please visit our Glossary.